Future energy demand, scarcity of available fuels and environmental regulations put pressure on power plant producers to come up with solutions for safe, efficient and clean ways to generate power. The scarcity of fuels mainly applies to oil and to a lesser extend to natural gas. With an availability of coal in abundance, electricity production from coal is mostly done using steam power plants. A cleaner and more efficient option to generate power from coals is to use them in an integrated gasification combine cycle (IGCC). In an IGCC, coals are first gasified to yield syngas, consisting mainly of CO (carbon monoxide) and H2 (hydrogen).
Syngas typically has a significantly lower calorific value as compared to conventional natural gas fuels. By removing the CO content from the syngas prior to combusting it, one also has an effective means for CO2 (carbon-dioxide) capture. The IGCC concept with pre-combustion CO2 capture is one of the most cost-effective ways to produce electricity and avoid the emission of CO2 in the future. The economical potential of the IGCC plant with CO2 capture can increase even further when natural gas prices rise faster than expected or with increased carbon tax regulation.
Due to the low calorific value and high hydrogen content, the combustion of syngas fuels requires the development of adapted or completely new combustion systems which are able to handle the wide range of syngas fuels, and produce little emissions and can handle the high reactivity of the fuels.
The syngas fuel composition depends on the type of gasifier used and on whether or not the CO is separated from the fuel. Besides syngas fuels, the combustion system might run on a second conventional fuel for backup and start up. The ideal possibility is to have all the different types of fuels combusted in a stable way by one combustion system by performing a proper combustion method to increase the efficiency and compensate for the efficiency loss due to the gasifier.